Daily Fantasy Strategy – 9/26 – For Draftstreet

Alright folks, it’s the final four days of daily fantasy! At this point, the primary concern you should have is whether or not guys are in the lineup. Teams give young players opportunity, shut injured players down, and generally troll fantasy players with their lineup cards.

To get an idea of which teams have been most guilty of that, the table below shows the number of players each team has used in September. It also shows the number of qualified hitters (3.1 plate appearances per team game) as a second gauge to measure how often bench players are playing. The last column shows the team’s September wOBA which, despite being a small sample, can help along with the other columns in picking a team to pitch against.

The Daily Five
Mark Buehrle – $8,920
A steady horse all year long (and for 12 years straight, really), Buehrle isn’t flashy but gets enough strikeouts with decent enough ratios to matter. The Orioles were recently eliminated and could be trotting out a makeshift lineup that includes nobody impactful aside from Chris Davis. Even as they pushed for the playoffs, the Orioles managed just a .303 wOBA in September.

Jeremy Guthrie – $9,326
Not exactly going with the sexy names on the mound today, but the White Sox are too inept to pass up (.287 September wOBA, only four players getting regular playing time). Guthrie strikes nobody out but keeps the ratios in check and should go at least six innings; at this price, you hope for four Ks and maybe a W.

Eric Young Jr. – $7,373
Johnny Hellweg is having trouble figuring it out at the Major League level, so while he does we get one last chance to pick on him. I’ve gone with Young here at a somewhat expectant price, banking on a stolen base (the Brewers throw out fewer than 25 percent of base stealers) to come through.

Mitch Moreland – $6,979
The Rangers draw The Junkyard Dog Jerome Williams in Arlington, and while Williams isn’t terrible, he’s not terrific either. Texas might be the safest team in baseball for daily fantasy lineups given their playoff position (still fighting and thus likely to roll out the starters), so feel free to double up here.

Nick Swisher – $6,593
Cleveland is another team in a dog fight for a Wild Card berth and thus likely to fill out a normal-looking lineup card. They draw Andrew Albers, a lefty who is not as good as his 3.98 ERA suggests. Swisher has a crazy .391 wOBA against lefties, making it hard to explain his price tag here.

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